


Help

by kazahegao



Category: Silent Hill (Video Game Series)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 12:02:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15291096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kazahegao/pseuds/kazahegao
Summary: A little drabble about Laura living with James after the Leave ending.





	Help

It had taken Laura a long time to call James ‘dad’, probably around the time she turned 12 and convinced him to start going to therapy. She didn’t particularly view him as a father though, she just thought it would make him feel better.

She often thought about the place they had met, the seemingly abandoned town of Silent Hill. It was quiet, a thick layer of fog everywhere. Occasionally, she would look back on it fondly, despite its eerie aura. She would recall locking James in a room and playing detective after he’d gone missing (he didn’t like that story), scaring him by loudly playing a note on a piano when he entered, and even sometimes about her initial encounter with Eddie on the way to the town (which she noticed James got quiet whenever Eddie was mentioned).

However, James remembered it differently. He recalled a creature with a red metal pyramid-shaped head, nurses with twisted features wielding weapons, as well as other creatures that sounded equally ludicrous yet terrifying. At first, she thought it was a joke, but his insistence made it feel real – the way he could describe the dingy flesh-coated walls, the smell of rotting flesh, the dark endless sky… She could tell it felt real to him. Looking back, she knew there was something wrong with the town, but James took that to a whole new level.

For weeks, months even, James had been kept awake at night by whatever he may or may not have seen there. He’d wake up screaming, crying, covered in his own urine, or a combination of the three. Laura would try to help him, but he would always claim he was fine (despite the fact he was obviously in a state, sweating and hyperventilating), so eventually she left him to handle it himself. She was 8, only a kid after all, she didn’t exactly understand how he felt. A part of her felt he deserved these nightmares…

The final point where she had snapped at him was when she noticed a bundle of scars along his wrists. The first few scars came over time, to which he’d say he’d accidentally cut himself doing some DIY, but after a while this excuse was too unbelievable. Not only did James barely do any DIY, but there is no way the scars would be so perfectly in line with one another. She shouted and yelled about how he needed to stop lying and keeping secrets from her, how he wasn’t okay and needed to stop saying he was, how he needed someone to help him. Instantly she regretted how she had approached the subject as she noticed James was flinching and crying.

That’s when she realised: the guilt was eating him up alive.

...

It was hard to find a psychiatrist at first, as it’d have to be one who wouldn’t report James. Laura felt more like the guardian - finding numbers in the phone book, asking teachers who they would recommend, waking up James in the morning for his appointments and psyching him up to go in their offices; she sometimes even sat in there with him, despite the protest of both the therapist and James.

**Author's Note:**

> i find these two's relationship really interesting, i might write more about them in the future. i didn't really proof read this so if there's any errors please tell me!


End file.
